OSLO, Norway — Recalling the “burning, blinding and suffocating” horrors of chemical weapons, the head of a watchdog group trying to consign them to history accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday, as prize winners in medicine, physics and other categories also took bows for their awards.

Ahmet Uzumcu, director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said such toxic tools of warfare have an “especially nefarious legacy,” from the trenches of World War I to the poison-gas attacks in Syria this year.

“You cannot see them. You cannot smell them. And they offer no warning for the unsuspecting,” Uzumcu said.

The OPCW, formed in 1997, this year received its most challenging mission to date: overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile.